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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27529849">The Future Seems Kind</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicadabug/pseuds/circopoi'>circopoi (cicadabug)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Disco Elysium (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Fighting, Fist Fights, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Jean, POV Second Person, Partner Dynamics, Pre-Canon, Verbal Abuse, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000, jeangst, odd zone between platonic and romantic, pre-martinaise harry is a piece of shit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-08 06:33:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,657</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27529849</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicadabug/pseuds/circopoi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It's about the rituals. After bad cases, Harry and Jean crash at each other's places to recover. In the beginning, it went well. As the years pass, it stops going so great. A failed pizza order, a fist-fight, and futility—this fic is about one of these nights.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Du Bois &amp; Jean Vicquemare, Harry Du Bois/Jean Vicquemare</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Future Seems Kind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>we condone no one's actions in this fic :3 - leave kudos + comments if u enjoy - thank you to <a>nicpic</a> for betaing this</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the case concludes, the ritual begins with the first pair of cigarettes. The two of you light up before you’re even fully in the motor carriage. Fingers trembling, twin tight diaphragms pulling gasps of smoke inwards and sputtering them back out in weak and erratic plumes, struggling to disengage from the tension of the day. The shell of the car shrouds you in a microcosm of sweat and muffling ash-air. You don’t talk; there’s nothing to say. Neither of you wear seatbelts. </p><p>The second pair of cigarettes ready themselves in your fingers to replace the first as the car careens into his apartment complex’s garage. He clamps it in his mouth, head swiveling behind to back into the parking space, and you light it for him, and then for yourself. By now your fingers have warmed; the nicotine throbs through them, but the knot in your gut hasn’t loosened yet. </p><p>You’re both ready for the third cigarette by the time you’ve shambled up the stairs and he’s found his room key among the useless detritus in his pockets—food wrappers, plastic bags, odd small things he picks up from the ground. And the cigarettes are ready to join their brethren and lay their five-minute lives at your feet. It’s why they’re called soldiers among the Revacholian veteran underbellies, you reckon. A deep-seated recognition of the consuming becoming consumed, or something equally melodramatically profound.</p><p>The two of you drop your briefcases, light up again, and sway like poppies in Harry’s tiny, pungent living room. It’s still hell, but at least this hell is familiar to you. </p><p>Sober, Harry isn’t a creature of routine, but when the alcohol has ripped through his executive control, his subconscious takes over—and it bestows upon him the homing instinct of Stage 4 dementia. This instinct was what the rituals were for originally, so his feet could take him home—his or yours, whichever’s closer—even if his mind could not. But you’ve adapted them into something different, something that breeds a wordless clockwork ease in recovering from difficult cases together. The next step: you collapse somewhere. Maybe bawl, talk, bemoan the wretchedness of the world together and feel pathetic about it later, but often the proximity to another human being is all you need.</p><p>“Fuck,” Harry says.</p><p>You take a drag. “Fuck,” you agree. </p><p>Cases regarding children are always better left undiscussed. Tonight will be silent at best and filled with pained idle chitchat at worst. </p><p>Harry swallows. “I need a drink,” he says. Oh, wait, no. There’s another kind of worst. </p><p>“No, you need to order a pizza so we don’t starve to death.”</p><p>His eyes dart around the room, at the bottles scattered and leaking across the carpet. None of them are full. “No, Jean. I *need* it. Drinking needs me. It’s my destiny to drink right now.”</p><p>“No the fuck it isn’t. It’s your destiny to order a goddamn pizza.” </p><p>He straightens. “So I can drink after I order the pizza?”</p><p>“Order the pizza, shitkid, and then we’ll talk.” Normally, you’d be sprawled horizontal on the threadbare couch right now, but there’s the risk of not being able to get back up. And if you’re down for the count, who will wrangle him? So you cross your arms and lean on a wall, next to an empty shelf coated with dust. </p><p>“Fine, fine. Sheesh.” After a final drag, he jams the end of his cigarette into the wall, leaving a char mark, meanders to the kitchen counter, and makes the order, glaring at you all the while. One large meat-lover’s pizza, delivered to 36 Perdition Road, Apartment 546. No, we can’t pick it up. What do you mean it’ll take an hour? Alright, I guess, just as long as it gets here before it goes bad. Thank you, good night, he says in a sing-song voice, looking directly into your eyes. He flashes you a joyless grin. “Happy?”</p><p>You roll your eyes. “No.”</p><p>“Yeah, you’re welcome, asshole.” He sighs, stretches his shoulders, scratches at his belly. “Now, as you promised. It’s booze time.”</p><p>“No, it isn’t.” You squint. He’s been talking big about drinking, but hasn’t actually drunk anything, even when he knows you can’t technically do anything to stop him—wait. “Are you… are you *out* of booze? Fucking—who are you?” You chuckle. “What’d you do with Harry Du Bois?”</p><p>Harry paces now, nudging bottles on the ground with his foot to gauge their fullness. “I’m not *out* of booze, who do you think I am? There’s some… hold on, I have a stash… “ He gives a bottle a hollow kick across the room before dislodging the cushions from the couch to toss them aside. The sad skeleton of the couch is a spread of nothing but breadcrumbs, cigarette butts, and the odd small things that fall out of Harry’s pockets. “No.. I didn’t… I *swore* I didn't drink it… ” </p><p>The forlornness in his voice is just the right amount of disjointedly absurd and you’re struggling to hold back cackles as he drops to the floor and swipes an arm underneath the couch, returning lint and no bottles. “You really suck at this, Harry. God *damn.* You might be a piss-poor excuse of a human being but… a piss-poor excuse of an alcoholic too? Maybe you should—maybe consider quitting?”</p><p>“Shut up. Shut the fuck up. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” He surges up and jabs a finger in your face. “I have a last-resort stash.” </p><p>“Oh, yeah? A secret vial of vodka up your ass or something? Ten reál says you drank that too and forgot.” </p><p>“You *wish* I had a secret vial up my ass, homo.” </p><p>You don't know what the hell that’s supposed to mean but you do know not to ask. “No, *you* wish you did. ‘Cause otherwise you're all dry. Dumbfuck idiot.”</p><p>“No. No, no.” He approaches you with a showman’s swagger. You blow a puff of smoke in his face and snuff the cig underneath your bootsole. “I have access to a pocket dimension. It’s absolutely *stuffed* with the finest wines. I—”</p><p>You snort. “Oh, you don’t know shit about wines. Not if they cost more than a railway ticket.”</p><p>“Shhhh. I’m speaking. The master is speaking.” He holds a finger near your lips. “I’m gonna show you. I’m gonna show you my fucking pocket dimension of infinite alcohol. And you’re gonna repent for your blasphemy.” </p><p>“Go on.” You lean back and raise an eyebrow. “Show me.”</p><p>His arm snakes to the side and your eyes follow—you could have *sworn* the shelf was empty, no?—but it is and by the time you whip your head back, Harry’s slipped his other hand into your jacket and pilfered your whiskey flask. He dangles it in front of your face, a grotesque smile stretching his cheeks. </p><p>“See? Now repent, motherfucker. I’m your pocket dimension god n—” </p><p>You lunge for the flask, but he yanks it out of reach. “Fuck.”</p><p>“Repent.” </p><p>“No. Fuck repentance. You’ll drink it all yourself no matter what I do.” Plus, you’ll probably have to do something horribly embarrassing to *repent.* Last time it was his disco clothes. The time before that… you refuse to recall. It's a self-propagating cycle, you decide. Repent, regret, sell your soul to erase the memory with alcohol, get yourself roped into repentance again.</p><p>“If you repent I’ll give you a sip. You’re no fun sober, anyway.” </p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Please?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“I’ll let you have a drink first. As collateral.” </p><p>“...Fine. Pass the flask.”</p><p>He shakes his head. “Nuh-uh. One sip.” For a moment, as his hair flops into his face, the darkness around his eyes grows. And then it flickers away, replaced with malicious cheer. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing—you can’t trust him to drink tonight, no matter how much you want to. </p><p>You let him touch the mouth of the flask against your lips, steel yourself, wait for the liquid to slosh down. And you wrench it from his grasp, twisting away. Train your eyes on the stucco ceiling as you tilt your head all the way back and let the flask of whiskey—thank god, there’s only, what, a third left—coat your mouth and throat in fire, all the way down, the lining of your esophagus burning away with every gulp. You throw the empty flask at the ground and wheeze and drag your sleeve across your mouth.</p><p>“Jean, what the *fuck?*” Harry dives after the empty flask, turning it upside down, peering into it as if liquor would appear if he searched hard enough for it. “There’s no more.”</p><p>“What, a man can’t drink his own fucking liquor?” </p><p>A bottle sails past your knee, launched by Harry’s foot. He kicks through the pile of empty glass with a renewed vigour. “That was a dick move. It was a dick move and you know it.”</p><p>“Right, right, forgive me for being a goddamn dick for drinking my own liquor—which you so graciously offered me. You were saying about the stash?” </p><p>“Fuck you. Shut your stupid bitch mouth. I never run out of alcohol.” Harry spits to the side for emphasis. Slowly, the glob of spit seeps into the fibers, leaving a dark foamy stain. It’s atrocious. This is why you sleep on the couch while he takes the floor. “You haven’t found my secret *secret* stash yet.” </p><p>“Where the fuck—where the fuck is that, huh?”</p><p>The alcohol is coming along. Your tongue is fatter than you remember, and a fuzzy warmth encases your limbs. Somewhere, your heart begins to beat. Two shots and some more on an empty stomach does wonders to lift your exhaustion and distract you from the lurid minutia of the case, but this is not what you downed them for. You did it for him. </p><p>Harry wrenches open a kitchen cabinet and tosses down a red briefcase with a cross emblazoned on it. “It’s right here. And I know for *sure* I didn’t drink it.” His voice is no longer light; it’s now low and smooth, with a grim edge. It startles you, grasps you and prevents you from sinking fully into the warm haze of slight inebriation.</p><p>“...What are you talking about?” If it’s an actual stash, you can’t drink it, not without losing sight of him. You’ll have to pour it down the sink. </p><p>His fingers slip and fumble to unzip the first aid kit. As it flops open, a bottle of clear liquid rolls out across the countertop, which Harry swipes with glee. </p><p>“Isopropyl alcohol,” he says. “70 percent. Fastest train to Hammered Town, if we weren’t such pansies. But I’m done being a pansy. I’m an *alcoholic.*” </p><p>You stumble forward from your comfortable lean on the wall. It could be water, and this could all be an embarrassing but well-planned practical joke. But the coldness in his voice… his jokes aren’t meant to unnerve you as much as this one does. “This isn’t funny anymore, Harry. Put it down,” you say, slowly. Fuck, this is the worst possible time to be rhetorically impaired. </p><p>“It was never funny in the first place.” He shrugs, like the two of you could be discussing the weather. The nonchalance of it all twists your already churning stomach.</p><p>“You... know the consequences, yes?”</p><p>“Nausea, dizziness, headaches. It’ll burn a hole through my stomach lining. Probably through my brain too, but that’s the point, ain’t it? You win some, you lose some.” He looks up at you from the label, fevered eyes recessed in shadow under incandescent light. He looks old, so old, all traces of boyishness gone from his lined face. </p><p>You place your hands on the counter and the coolness of the linoleum edges up through the skin of your hot palms. Steady, now. No sudden movements. This is what comes with the title of Du Bois’ Satellite-Officer. One moment you’re chuckling and elbowing each other and the next you’re trying to remember what the academy taught you about conflict de-escalation. Your position requires coaxing him back from literal and metaphorical ledges. And a coin lands, and a switch flips, and he’s back to grinning and tossing his head back. The pressure between you oscillates like this, never slowing, never stopping, you caught between. “Harry. Listen to me. You don’t want to do this.”</p><p>“Easy for you to say. You’re three shots in.” </p><p>“Hand me the bottle. You know you don’t want to do this.” Your pulse thunders, but your thoughts slow. God, you can’t think of anything to say. “Please.”</p><p>“But I do.” He smiles, tossing the bottle from hand to hand. “You should’ve let me drink, Jean.”</p><p>You breathe deeply, shakily. There’s still hope for it all if he hasn’t chugged the bottle already. “Listen. We’re going to walk down to the Fritte together, alright? I’ll buy you a Pilsner. Just hand the bottle over.” You hold your hands out, palms up, as if in supplication. All you wanted was one night sober—but it was always going to come to this. “We can forget all this.” Please.</p><p>“I don’t need your permission to buy a fucking Pilsner. I don’t need your money either,” he snarls. “You’re so goddamn full of yourself—you think I’m fucking stupid? You think I’m a helpless little baby who needs Papa to hold his hand to the liquor store?”</p><p>“Fuck.” You wipe at your brow. Your hand comes away damp, the sweat both hot and cold. “This is what it’s about? I’m sorry, alright? I didn’t mean it. I—god, please, Harry—”</p><p>“Fuck you.” He twists the cap of the bottle, knuckles bulging. It takes all of your willpower not to surge forward and bat it out of his hands. It’d separate him from the alcohol, yes, but redirect his destructive tendencies toward you. “Always playing the victim. Harry, please this, please that, but fuck whatever Harry wants because I’m his pure virginal guardian who can do no wrong. Project your stupid savior complex onto someone else if you’re that insecure.”</p><p>His words trickle into your head, one after the other, single-file like a procession of prisoners of war. Before you can reply, he stabs through the foil seal with a kitchen knife and pours the clear liquid smoothly into the cap. The scent of isopropyl—formaldehyde, bitterness, poison—fills in the air. </p><p>“If you really wanted to save people,” he says, “then you should’ve saved her.”</p><p>Oh. *This* is what it’s about. Your blood surges and you bite the inside of your lip. So much for the sacred unspoken contract *not* to talk about the case. “It’s over. We did all we could.” </p><p>“*I* did all I could. You did nothing. You just sat around and you let her die.” He swirls the cap of alcohol and wafts the fumes toward his nose, mockingly, like a goddamn sommelier. “Oh, this shit’s strong.”</p><p>“Yeah?” Stifled pressure builds in your chest cavity. You could shut him up right now. But no, he doesn’t mean it—he’s just angry he’s sober. That’s all, right? “Better sitting around than rotting away in a fucking opioid den for the first half of the week. And you’re surprised he got away?” </p><p>“I got more done in the last half than your dumb ass could manage in a month. I’m a fuck-up—but you? You’re worse. You’re *useless.*”</p><p>“What?” Your fingers curl and shake. </p><p>“You heard me. You’re a shit pass at a cop. Think you’re so clever, but I’m onto you. I know your game. They’ll toss you away when I’m gone,” He leans in. For once, there’s no alcohol-scent on his breath—instead, the stench of decay batters you full-force. “That’s why you try so hard to keep me around.” </p><p>Enough. You spit two words: “Fuck you.” A blaze of rage—you explode. </p><p>Your fist crushes the front of Harry’s shirt while your other arm rears back and shoots forward, connecting with his cheekbone. He grunts, cold spills across the table, and isopropyl vapour streaks colorless fog across your sight. A hand in your hair—you’re spun to the side, the room whirling and your own feet catching until your knees hit the cold kitchen floor in an ice-sharp burst of spatial clarity.</p><p>Like a springtrap, you rocket up to uppercut Harry’s jaw, but he dodges your uncoordinated swipe, launching himself backwards into the stovetop behind him, paper plates startling and fluttering onto the ground. He flashes a yellow predatory grin. “What, am I wrong?”</p><p>Alcohol riots inside you, filling your withered body with renewed life. But the rush of vitality interrupts—a foot slams into your chest, forcing the breath out of your body, and you stumble back, wheezing. Another brush of clarity as you look up, meet his eyes—ice blue, ringed with unfathomable darkness. But piercing, brilliant, young and alive, hungrier than you’ve ever seen them. The haze of bloodlust is a striking look on him, you realize. Far better than the haze of narcotics.</p><p>He pounces across the room in an instant, crushing your head back into the wall, hands enclosing around your throat. Sparks fly across your vision. But the rebound gives your head enough momentum to smash forward into his upper lip, loosening his grip on you. As he groans and staggers back your elbow sweeps up his chin with a satisfying, horrible *click.*</p><p>Where did you learn to fight like this, Jean? The roving gangs of savage Valley street-boys, indistinguishable from wild dogs? The nameless ranks of hand-to-hand combat instructors at the academy? The old boxers at your favorite gym—lost and scattered to the city now?</p><p>No. You learned ferocity from the man in front of you. Animals like you aren’t born with rage. You must be taught. </p><p>He grabs your tie, readying another blow—but you snake your arm around his and twist it at the elbow. Something cracks. He howls—it's beautiful. And your legs sweep out again from underneath you. You fall and drag him down with you, rolling, aiming punches at flesh spinning too fast to collide with, mouth filling with coppery blood, fabric ripping, hands scrabbling at what you hope is a throat and not a maw lined with teeth, knocking papers, books, an ashtray to the ground. </p><p>Carpet becomes stone slick with alcohol. You’re in the kitchen now. Your fingers dart up to the counter, close around a dark handle sticking from the ledge. </p><p>Your rage is darker than his. You hold the knife to his throat.</p><p>And the room contracts into the gleaming point of the blade and both of you freeze. He’s not smiling anymore. You’re above him, his fingernails digging into the hand—your hand— around his throat, he’s wheezing, you’re panting as you feel muscles part underneath your fingertips, sliding into soft nerves and blood vessels. The knife flashes a distorted reflection of you, the war haze twisting your face. It wavers in time with the rises and falls of his chest, his breathy gulps. If you continue, something will shatter and it will not be repaired so easily as flesh and bone.</p><p>You look at him. He looks at you, his heartbeat pounding under your fingers, yours just as fast. Blood trails down his lip.</p><p>The sight of it snaps you from paralysis. Slowly, you release the vice grip around his throat. The knife moves away from his neck and rests on the ground with a soft *tink.*</p><p>Something has already changed, irreversibly. Tomorrow, you’ll shamble into the C-Wing and take your spot next to his desk. Nix will ask his questions, and everyone else will mouth them to each other during lunch and smoking breaks, when they think you can’t hear. Will you be able to pretend this never happened? There’s no fear in his eyes, no joy, no thirst, no fog. Only cool, coiled blankness. When he’s drunk he’s volatile and violent, but when he’s sober, he terrifies you like nothing else. He—</p><p>Muffled thumps behind the east wall. Your heads whip. A man yells from the neighboring room in a thick, nasally Ubi accent. “Oi, keep it the fuck down, Du Bois. Get another fucking room or I’ll toss ya out myself. Fucking f****ts. I’m trying to dance.” </p><p>He cranks the volume up. A cheap bass beat thrums, the vibrations bleeding through the thin drywall, traveling through the ground up your knees. </p><p>“Give me the knife,” Harry says, voice still quavering from exertion. You already know exactly what he's thinking.</p><p>“No, I—I got this.” </p><p>“...Alright. You got this.”</p><p>You take aim at the far wall. It’s not something you were taught, but you did have a knife-throwing phase in high school. You thought it’d make you look cool. “Turn the music down, dickface. I’ll fuck you up,” you growl in your best male posturing baritone.</p><p>You raise the knife behind your ear and whip it forth.</p><p>It slices through the air, collides with the wall handle-first, and falls. The clatter of metal on stone resounds, though. “You hear that? I’m not fucking shitting!” </p><p>Harry whistles softly. “Niiice. Do it again. There’s… there’s more in the drawer on your left.”</p><p>You throw two more, this time taking care of the angle of your elbow, the twist of your torso. Both of them impale the wall with satisfying *thunks.* And you launch a last one, a large, rusty machete-looking thing that has no business being in a kitchen knife drawer, with full force and no form, just for fun.</p><p>It spins and hits the wall sideways—the *thonk* is thick and juicy—and falls, with a raucous clank. </p><p>You roar with the last of your rage. “That was a fucking sword! I’ve got a fucking sword.” Red-laced spit flies from your mouth. </p><p>“Yeah, he’s got a fucking sword,” Harry yells. “Don't *fuck* with us.”</p><p>A beat. And the music reduces to a low simmer, the bass resembling less an earthquake and more a persistent heartbeat. “Fuck you psychos. Psycho cop f****ts.”</p><p>Harry catches your eye. His mouth flickers with the beginning of a triumphant grin, but it droops into a wince. </p><p>The adrenaline dies alongside the wilting dance music and exhaustion conquers you, sucks the strength dry from your limbs. You don’t roll off him as much as collapse to the side and let gravity peel your sweating form off his.  </p><p>The silence returns. Neither of you know how to fill it, now that your heart rates have slowed enough to let pain seep into your awareness. You struggle against the downward pull of fatigue and curl against the cabinets under the counter, pulling your knees up and rubbing your tender knuckles. </p><p>Your own head pounds, patches of your face aching with burst capillaries where bone collided with bone, the ground, a book he might have swung at you. You wouldn’t be surprised if your face looked like a fucked-up tie-dye job. </p><p>He wipes the blood from his lip and scoots back, away from the puddles of alcohol on the floor. </p><p>His mane is mussed, pink bruises in early bloom on his cheekbone and no doubt on his jaw as well, under his beard. He stares straight ahead. The weak overhead kitchen light washes his face in sickly yellow. Before it nauseates you, you look away and study the mould encrusting the sink. But you can’t pretend he’s not there. The heat flaring from his skin bleeds into yours. </p><p>When the rage fades, when the euphoria dissolves, what remains? Emptiness. Craving. You haven’t done anything but alcohol for some time, but you know what coming down looks like—it looks like you right now, with your shaking and sweating, eyes feral, your hair wet and plastered to your forehead and the nape of your neck. And now you know what it feels like, as well. </p><p>Your jaw throbs. You unclench it. </p><p>After a few barely-suppressed grunts of pain, Harry sheds his jacket—the sleeve droops, torn at the shoulder—and rises to his feet. He retrieves a tray of ice from the fridge with a corpselike jerk of his arm. Allows it to drop through his fingers to the floor, dislodging a few cubes with a rattle.</p><p>Wordlessly, you get up and go through your own motions. It’s a different post-case ritual now, familiar but uncanny. In the first aid kit knocked to the ground is anti-inflammatory ointment in a small metal tin. </p><p>You swallow. “Any broken skin?” you mutter. You don’t turn to him, but you feel Harry’s gaze scan you. There’s a pause as he decides whether to respond or keep the silent tension.</p><p>“No, doesn’t feel like it.” He paws a year-old bag of frozen corn to the ground. “Paper towels are under the sink.”</p><p>You grunt in acknowledgement. Bandages go back in the kit; you tap dust from the roll of paper towels. He sinks to a sitting position next to you, takes the ointment from your hands, raises a hand to wipe a stripe of the herbal goo across your forehead, where you headbutted him. </p><p>But you jerk away. “Fuck off. I can do it myself,” you hiss. </p><p>“Right.” He shrinks back, smears the ointment on his knuckles, reaches for more and—”Agh.” He rolls his sleeve up to examine his left elbow, the one you twisted. </p><p>You look away, face heating. “Pass it over when you’re done.” For now, you shake the ice out of the tray and wrap them in paper towels. </p><p>“Yeah, yeah.” He turns his elbow, flexes his arm, kneads the joint with his fingers.</p><p>You glance back, eyeing his elbow, inflamed and pink and starting to swell. “How bad is it?” </p><p>He squints in concentration. “Nothing’s broken—but I’ll have Nix look at it tomorrow. Could be worse.”</p><p>“They’re going to ask questions.”</p><p>“Yes.” Harry’s arm contorts, twisting for a good angle to apply a dab of ointment. His voice is tinged with frustration. “And we…” He’s not the most flexible person. “We aren’t going to answer them.” He bends it too far—with another yelp of pain, he almost drops the ointment.</p><p>Fuck it. You crawl forward and snatch the tin from him. “You look fucking stupid.” You press a bundle of ice into his hand. “Put this to your head for now. Hold your arm up.”</p><p>“But—”</p><p>“Shut up, shitkid.” </p><p>And gently, you take his elbow and massage the herb-scented ointment into it. It’s the one pleasant-smelling thing in the room. His breath hitches as you press into the bone—you wish you could forget the sound. </p><p>“How much does it hurt?” you ask again.</p><p>He takes a moment to stare at your face, reading something in the deep-seated lines framing your mouth and brow. He turns away to hide a grimace. “Don’t flatter yourself. You fight like a little girl."</p><p>A lot, then. Something hollow and aching opens in the center of your chest.</p><p>As you roll his sleeve down, you let him take your head in his hands and paint ointment into your forehead, your cheekbone, the side of your jaw. It’s nice. The cool tang of the salve, the roughness of his fingers. You avoid his eyes and hold the ice to his elbow. He checks your neck for bruising, and, finding none, takes your hand—so softly, like you’re an old man on your deathbed making your final wishes—and works ointment into your sore knuckles.</p><p>Afterwards, you do the same for him, silently, as he holds the ice to your head. The hair on his hand clumps where the ointment brushes by them. You resist the urge to bend down and press your lips to his swollen knuckles, to swear fealty. He doesn’t have to ask you where it hurts, and neither do you, because you did this to each other. </p><p>“I’m tired, Jean,” he says, once you draw your hands back for the last time. Within this sentence is an infinitude of familiarity. *Tired* isn’t just physical. It’s not something an indulgent sleep into the weekend can fix. It’s an accumulation of years of failure—of nameless bodies carted away to the morgue, of freshly baptized orphans too stunned to cry, of flesh defiled in every way the imagination can afford, of the worst humankind can offer—not because of incompetency, you hope, but because the world is large and indifferent, and you are but two small men. There is no victory for you; there is only delaying defeat by another day. </p><p>“I’m tired too,” you whisper, and sit back on your heels. “This job… “</p><p>“... is the only fight we are given,” he finishes, gently, the way he did the first time you broke down after a bad case, you hunched in the station locker room, him standing stately beside you with his hand on your shoulder. The rumble of this voice is barely audible over the ever-present ambient humming of apartment electricity. Now, it mostly goes unsaid, but this is the mantra your rituals are built upon.</p><p>He wanted to forget, even for a moment, and so did you. This is why you laugh, fight, drink, hurt each other and patch each other up afterwards—and why you will continue. There is solace in the delusion that your only enemy is the asshole by your side. </p><p>You stay there for a while, you on your knees, him curled up with his ass on the floor, neither of you looking at each other. Until he lies back, groaning, and pulls his ruined jacket over himself. “My god.” </p><p>You flop back and do the same, your muscles protesting at the movement but your fatigue winning out. “Yeah.”</p><p>“We’re fucked up.”</p><p>“Yeah.” A dry chuckle from you. “Fucking hell.” </p><p>“Think I’m just gonna sleep here tonight.” He pats the ground with a hand, twice. </p><p>You accept the unspoken invitation. “Sounds like a plan.”</p><p>The hardness of the ground beneath your head anchors you. It’s something solid. Your chest rises and falls, your ribs still smarting from where he kicked you. It’s easy to fall asleep here, your head near his feet and his feet near your head, separated by puddles of alcohol and melting ice, surrounded by scattered paper plates. Despite the mess, it’s next to him, and it’s warm, and you’ll clean it up tomorrow. </p><p>Wait, you’ve forgotten something. You prop yourself up on an elbow. “My meds. I have to… ”</p><p>He opens his eyes and pins you down with a gaze full of desperation. “Don’t go,” he whispers. </p><p>"But..." You blink, hold his stare. “... Alright, I won’t.” And you revel in his relief, the way his shoulders fall as he relaxes. It’s sick, how much it satisfies you that he wants you here, even if just to share dissipating warmth and exhaustion. You’ll deal with the fallout of skipping a dose tomorrow. For now, he needs you here. </p><p>You lie back down and clasp your hands over your stomach and breathe. You’ll deal with all of it tomorrow. Everything is fine. It’ll be okay, as long as he’s happy. This is for him.</p><p>His breath catches in his throat. “No, fuck. You can’t do this,” he says. “You need the meds.”</p><p>“I’ll be fine.” You shift and get comfortable on the floor. “One skipped dosage is alright. I'm going to feel like dogshit in the morning regardless.”</p><p>But you hear him reconsider, shuffling, stifling groans, his feet clomping vibrations into the tiles as the warmth next to you disappears. Your briefcase unzipping, the rattling of capsules in a container. You watch him fill a glass of water at the sink from ground level. He returns—and almost slips on the alcohol. He mops it up with his foot on his ruined jacket and, squatting, gingerly sets several pills on the sternum he kicked minutes prior and the glass on the floor beside you. “Eat up.” </p><p>You take your dosage as he resumes the serene, sepulchral position on the ground next to you, lying parallel but in the opposite orientation. It’s perfect and comfortable, you realize, because you can be next to each other without having to look at each other. The two of you have the same shitty ceiling to stare at until you pass out. </p><p>A hesitant touch on your fingers—his hand—and you’re endlessly grateful you can turn your head away. Whether it’s to hide your expression or avert your eyes from his, you can’t tell. You reach down and take it, curling your fingers around his. They’re warm, but not furnace-hot, the way they are when he’s drunk or high. A firm squeeze, and his hand moves higher, pushing your sleeve up, ghosting past your pulse, lightly gripping your wrist, and then your forearm. You grip his tighter.</p><p>The gesture was a greeting custom for ancient Perikarnissian generals, then a symbol of the Revolution in Graad, traditional handshakes discarded due to prion contamination. But most importantly, this gesture is salvation, the way you’d grip a drowning man to pull him from a river. It’s not an apology or an admission of guilt—neither of you are guilty. It’s a promise, sealed by the barely-there throbs of each others’ pulse points. He breathes in tandem with you as you settle on his arm. You give a slight tug upwards and test the strength of your grips on each others’ wrists: he’s not letting go, and neither are you. Perfect. </p><p>Before long, the two of you are out cold on the kitchen tiles, bruised and battered but warm, no dreams in your heads—nothing but soft and exhausted oblivion. Not even the frustrated pounding of an impatient pizza boy at the door can wake you. </p><p>This is one of the last nights he spends with you sober, but you don’t know that yet. When you open your eyes the next morning, his arm still nestled in yours, the future seems kind. </p>
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